zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Your post displays a huge problem on the left. The reflex to automatically condemn any break from liberal orthodoxy as racist, sexist, or some other -ist. You have no clue what my stance is and you're already ready to swing the racism axe.
My point is that a flag is nothing more than colored threads arranged in a pattern. I think we too often focus on the meaningless, symbolic fights like arguing a flag should go rather than trying to combat the meaning it is being assigned.
These fights are engaged in because they're easy, not because they're important.
Imagine you see someone looking for their keys on the ground under a street light. You ask them where they dropped them and they say they dropped them on the other side of the street. You ask him why he's looking under the light and he says "the light's better".
That's what these fights over things like flags are. They don't accomplish anything in the fight against racism (I'd argue they just inflame the situation) but it's far easier to get wins than in the fight against racism.
Change people's minds and these symbols will fade on their own.
I also try to not be so quick to prejudge someone as racist. Ive known people who fly the rebel flag because they had ancestors who fought in the war, I've known people who fly it because they don't like the government, and I've known people who fly it as part of their racism. I generally dismiss the flag as a poor indicator of anything.
Except for the fact that flags and objects have carried meanings forever.
The idea that fighting racism doesn't involve just killing this flag is silly.
I forget who it was but I remember years ago getting into an argument with someone on this born. They were raised in the south and assumed since they were taught so much about the civil war in school they'd know more than a northern boy like me. When they were going on about how clearly the Civil War was fought over economics and states rights and that Slavery wasn't an issue on the minds, when I pointed out that the majority if not entirety (there were a few that I didn't remember and still don't) that specifically cite slavery as one of the main reasons for success and all the other things they cited were framed around it, the person was a bit indignant and insisted I was wrong until I pasted them. Because they were taught in school this wasn't the case.
And that's the issue with the Confederate Flag. So many people think that it's a flag for "southern pride" for "state pride" but this was a banner that was raised while Lee's army marched into the north and captured runaway slaves and free black people alike and marched them back into the south to enslave them. It's literally a flag that reminds people of one of the most abhorrent things in American history, that we took life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from. All in the name of cheap dollars. It's not a black mark on the south or north, it's a black mark on the whole country. And by being complicit in allowing the confederate flag, we're not doing our part to make a small amount of amends for the tragedy of 2 and a half centuries of Slavery on our soil.